For Later reading

three articles on the EU vs Greece, from a religious standpoint.

Greece, of course, has a culture of Orthodoxy not Roman Christianity and the enlightenment.

LINK sees the Greeks demanding "mercy" because Orthodoxy has nuance. But he also thinks the Pope will legalize divorce. Since the second is a fantasy (and would lead to schism) one has to take the first with a grain of salt.


LINK2

so why is the EU demanding the Greeks open their markets on Sunday as part of the deal?

Link3 from the Economist.

all three essentially say religion insists on a "Get out of jail free" card (or in this case, get out of debt free card)

since forgiving debts of the poor periodically goes back to the Old Testament, I presume this is "religious".

However, what about when much of the money being lost is not from the super-rich, but the hard earned savings of the middle class, often retirement savings, and the reason for the debt is corruption, one has to ask: Is it permissible to screw grandmom out of her hard earned savings to let a Greek bureaucrat to keep his overblown pension?

article headsup via Getreligionblog

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related item: Father Z links to an article reminding Catholics they don't have to follow the Pope on economic or political matters.

Yeah. One reason for a lot of anti Catholic sentiment in medieval times was that the Pope intervened as a secular monarch and then used his religious powers to enforce his political opinions.

and love of the poor doesn't mean deprive them of jobs that business would bring: It means teaching honesty to crooked politicians and businessmen.

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In case you didn't notice: Obama is pruning down the US military , so that if a war occurs they won't be able to respond.

a lot of this has been going on since the end of the Cold War, and much is reorganization because new weapons require fewer soldiers. But now it is affecting the ability of the military to fight.

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related item: Ethnic and religious tensions in the western Sahara.

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Hollywood brats vs SJW? I'll believe it when I see it. But when Avengers dared to show a normal marriage, and a character who lamented she couldn't have children, the director ended up quitting Twitter...

although, as I argued earliers, I didn't consider Jurassic world as posing "family values" when the woman who should have been arranging the rescue of ten thousand people went off trying to help "rescue" her nephews, and usually getting in the way doing so.

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if you have short wave, Art Bell is back...
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Smaug vs Tyranosaurus in film